6th and 7th March - First views of M81/82

[Stephen_M]

Still very much what feels like the beginner side of things, these past two nights have been good back yard observing and I've enjoyed discovering M81 and M82. It's almost been a year now of telescope ownership, and so soon it'll be back to the start for me. This is something that is quite an exciting proposition, and I'm looking forward to going through everything again but in slightly more depth than before. Anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself.

Seeing Ursa Major overhead is new for me, and so TLaO was back out and I was looking for inspiration. I admit I have been spoilt looking at Gemini, Perseus, Orion and Auriga, in so far as the multitude of navigation points to use to find your way. I was intrigued as the description was "hard to find, but easy to see"! The first night, I was back to using blind luck to find them. There certainly is far fewer stars in this part of the sky. However, I was able to find M81 with a bit of aimless searching in the eyepiece, and once found was very impressed with the view. It's hard to say just how faint a smudge of light it is, but it's still awe inspiring that all these DSOs are up there and 'visible' to us all.

On the second night, once I'd figured out the magnification of the TLaO picture, which must have been around x50, I was able to hop across to M82 once I'd found M81 again. It's certainly a great view to see the two different shaped galaxies so close to each other. Sketches are below. The only downside to the conditions was the mist forming in the valley, the temp was about freezing and so as the planes were flying into land at Leeds Bradford airport, I could see the mist illuminated overhead. I did look at a few other things, M36/37/38, M44, double cluster in Persues, and just a bit of time observing by naked eye.

I think my sketch of M82 has the wrong orientation, so I've posted in the beginners section about that. Thanks for reading!

 

[faulksy]

what a lovely read. it is amazing what we can see. keep looking up mate and clear skys

[Stephen_M]

Thanks for the comment.

I'm excited that from my perspective my astronomy journey appears to be in front of me in the form of a spiral or spring, and that each year you move up a level and build on the knowledge from last year. Hopefully at some point I will start traveling to darker sites for more 'impressive' views, but for now it seems to make sense to maximise everything I can see from the back garden.